African Dreams

  Last week I got a new batch of students to teach Physical Assessment to. I used to really enjoy teaching this material to graduate nursing students at home, but I had an entire semester in which to do so. Here, I have 6 hours to teach associate degree students so I had to pare it down and hustle. Most of my other classes here have had 10-15 students so I was surprised to see 39 students file into the room. They were brand new students and were much more enthusiastic than the previous ones. With the others I was led to believe that their silence and passivity was due to my radically different teaching style and perhaps inability to understand my accent. In Kenya, teaching students and staff management involves being called out publicly for your errors in a kind of shaming manner. Probably how we educated and supervised people about 50 years ago in the US. So naturally the students sit quietly hoping I won’t call on them. Well, not this bunch! They actually answered questions and l...

There are some children who live near the campus who like to visit the volunteers because we are a curiosity—the mzungu circus. Ryan started the bad habit of giving them candy, so now, like stray cats, they come for more. I ran out of candy a while back (or I should say, I got rid of it because of bugs and what it would do to their young teeth.) Then I gave them some cookies, and then some potato chips. These are not hungry children. Their parents are the hospital staff. So I bought some crayons and this became an activity everyone enjoyed. The other volunteers are sick of them because they can be a bit pushy and boundary-less. We usually just visit on the back porch but sometimes they come into the house and start rifling through our things. When I tell them not to touch Leigh’s paints and ukulele or my jigsaw puzzle, they say “why not?” and keep doing so. So I chase them away and they come back the next day. Mostly, all the children are irresistibly cute, even when they chase us down...

Water is a scarce resource in Africa. A billion people worldwide lack safe, clean drinking water.  It’s probably the main reason for poor health. Without it, crops don’t grow so people are malnourished. Contaminated drinking water causes diarrheal illnesses which are responsible for 12% of mortality in children under 5. Poor sanitation due to limited ability to wash causes spread of communicable disease. Over 2 billion people don’t have access to latrines. No running water in hospitals prevents proper sterilization of instruments used in procedures (causing nosocomial infections). And on and on… So when I complain of cold showers (which often clog up and barely flow) or toilets which don’t flush or water entirely running out, I’m complaining about something billions of people on the planet deal with  their whole lives. We buy drinking water from town in a big 18 liter jug, which we have to get someone to lug up to our house. Or we refill small water bottles at the CMMB office ...

If Mombasa sounds like Mumbai, it’s no surprise because there is strong Indian influence in this steamy coastal town. Leigh and I decided to splurge on another weekend trip to Mombasa, but were disappointed that our fellow volunteer in S. Sudan couldn’t join us due to illness. I’d already paid for a nonrefunable hotel so we decided to go anyway. It’s been well worth the expense! The Indian Ocean is as warm as bath water, and it’s no wonder. The temperature here spiked to about 105 F when we got off the train. We caught a tuk-tuk (much like a motorized rickshaw), which gave us a much appreciated breeze as we rode through the busy city. Mombasa has many Arabs, as well as Indians living here, as was obvious by the architecture and languages spoken. Our hotel has all the amenities and is on the beach. Many locals come to play soccer on the beach or swim in the warm ocean swells. All the young men wanted to befriend Leigh of course, and though there were other “mzungus” (white people) aroun...

             In medicine there’s an expression used to remind us to think of common diagnoses, rather than rare and exotic ones: “when you hear hoofbeats, think horses —not zebras”. Well not in Africa!                  I decided to go on another safari to Amboseli National Park (which is in the foothills of Mt Kilimanjaro) this weekend. I swear I was as much looking forward to taking a hot shower and eating  really good food and not dripping with sweat for a couple of days as I was seeing the animals!   Along the drive one can see many ancient baobab trees, which provide water and habitat to many species including humans. And the famous flat topped acacia that are iconic for Africa dot the parched landscape. Every now and then you’ll see a 3-4 foot mound of packed dirt, which is actually a hill of biting ants.                         ...